Dulce et Decorum est
by kookieznkream
Summary: Rose sometimes asks him if he ever sleeps. Rated T to be safe. [Written as part of a G community fanfic challenge]


**Author's note: **It's hastily put together over a span of 15 minutes at two in the morning for a G+ community fanfic challenge. It's kinda Nine/Rose if you squint. And there are some nods to 10's and 11's era, but it's set after 'Dalek'. Unbeta'd so read at your own risk.

Influenced by the works of Amy Tan and Arundhati Roy

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**Dulce et Decorum est**

Rose sometimes asks me if I ever sleep. I grin and tell her, "Of course I sleep! Everybody sleeps!"

She always laughs at that.

"But I've never seen you sleep, Doctor!"

I smile and reply, "Superior biology, me!"

I watched silently as she trudges off to her room, weary and tired from the day's adventures, before sliding under the console to fix things that didn't need to be fixed. Truth be told, there was a reason why I don't sleep anymore. They are waiting behind my eyelids, waiting to bleed into my dreams.

There is no light at the end of the path that I am walking on. Just shadows. Shadows leering and grinning from every corner, whispering at every turn. But I know that at the end of this path, the path that cuts through jagged thorns and branches that tear and tug at my skin, leaving festering wounds and gashes, is her. And if I believe in one thing, I believe in her.

I vaguely recall a time when I didn't dream of the screams of children. Of the burning. Of the stench of blood and of scorched flesh. Of the angry cry of Daleks. Instead, I remember vividly as the air burned and as world turned Angry-Coloured and as Death and War roamed the earth, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake.

And finally, Silence. I was Alone. The blood of billions forever staining my hands.

As years passed me by, the day bled to night and night to day as I kept running. Farther and Faster. Through Time and Space. Running to feel the ground fly away from my feet, the surge of adrenaline pumping through my veins. Something to keep me from remembering. Remembering that I would never again see the burnt-orange sky and silver leaves again. To never again see the twin suns blazing their way across the sky at dawn. To never again hear the carefree laughter of Gallifreyan children.

But I know I'm all right when she is next to me.

Because even though I burned with Gallifrey that terrible, terrible night, I feel alive when I take her hand in mine and we run for our lives. I feel so painfully alive when I hear my steady breathing and the steady thrum of my two hearts beating in unison against her wildly beating one.

Even so, I cannot sleep anymore. Because behind my eyelids, I am burning, and Gallifrey is burning, and then it's all gone. Suffocating Silence. Nothing left but a wound as a memory. And I know that the wound would, over time, leave a pale and shiny scar and leave me with nothing more than a wisp of memory of what-was and what-could-have-been. It's this way with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to shield the pain inside. And once it is closed, you no longer see the underneath, what had started the pain.

I like to laugh at this. Not of the joy of being alive. But a broken, tired laugh. A broken laugh of a broken man. A tired laugh of a tired, old man. I laugh at the cruel irony of the universe. At the long-gone tales of Gallifreyan heroes. At my own desperate, pitiful attempt to stay on the fine line between Reason and Insanity.

Because there will be no more joy or pain for me. Just Blood and Anger and Revenge.

There is nothing left for me. All I have left is regrets of the days gone by. Because in the end, History comes and overwhelms us, sweeps us into the torrents and the fast-flowing current of Time. Time Lord or not. Because in the end, we are all just stories.

There was, after all, a reason why I don't sleep anymore.

_My friend, you would not tell with such high zest_  
_To children ardent for some desperate glory,_  
_The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est_  
_Pro patria mori._

-"Dulce et decorum est", Wilfred Owens

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